Last updated on November 17, 2021
I haven’t talked much about traveling through Cuba but this image is pretty iconic Cuba in my memories. The cities in Cuba are filled with crumbling houses once painted with an array of blues, yellows, and oranges but the wealth that built most of Cuba decades ago has simply faded over the years—zero maintenance and little money an equalizer in the city. In this “equalization,” there was also a standardization of sorts that added a uniform element to the houses and the streets in the city. Houses that once might have stood out with unique architecture, colors, or styling blended into a state of disrepair evident throughout the grids of streets in Trinidad and Havana—the two cities I visited.
Why does this sum up my time then? Every house has these huge floor length windows looking onto the streets and it’s completely common to glimpse grandmothers perched in the windows rocking gently—or friends chatting through the bars. Children play in the windows and dogs poke out their heads. Business takes plays through the wire bars too, with food and cash exchanging hands between neighbors and friends.
It has taken me a while to look through the photos I took in Cuba as I was traveling through the region, but the wire-frame windows are a lasting travel memory of my time there.
More Cuba stories coming this summer; I was antsy about posting them for a while, but I think it’s generally in the clear now as the US government has gotten a lot more lenient in recent years.